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Cassadee Pope

Through interviewing bands for the past almost three years now, there are several incredibly talented acts that I've had the pleasure of interviewing multiple times and one of those bands was Hey Monday, the Florida based pop rock band that found themselves on tour with everyone in the scene from All Time Low to The Ready Set to the famed front runners of pop punk Fall Out Boy. Times have changed though for the Hey Monday camp as they go on hiatus which provided lead vocalist and main song writer Cassadee Pope the chance to break out on her own and try her cards at performing as a solo artist!

While taking the risk, it does mean sending her back to some much smaller spaces while test-driving her solo material before she heads into the studio to start recording. Providing an incredible set full of tons of Hey Monday songs and six or seven songs she's now written solo, the room was captivated and it was a sure sign of the success Cassadee is so soon to find once again!

Last time was at Dirty Work.Oh, yeah so a little while ago.

How is it to be like out on your own in comparison to being with a full band, maybe playing your own material?It's been awesome. I'm enjoying being able to have a bit more of a personal relationship with all the fans. I felt close to them before but it's been a bit more about me this time. I feel more like obligated to connect with the fans. I feel a lot more grateful for them at these shows because it's not Hey Monday, it's me and I feel like their support is really vital right now. So the fact that they're even at the shows is now more important to me then ever.

Then while it's a little soft, how did you go about working on your solo material compared to the group efforts?Well, it's always been the same. I've always done co-writes and done stuff on my own. The only difference is not doing material with Hey Monday. With Hey Monday it was more pop rock stuff and this stuff is a little bit poppier but it's never really changed. In my solo stuff, I didn't really have a direction in mind. Just to grow and kind of go with whatever direction it grew into and it turned out to be like a pop rock thing. A little more of a poppier base.

Then do you think a record will come soon? I know you've done some with Hey Monday but as Cassadee solo?I really want to. It's just a matter of a budget and making really good sounding albums because I think that's all part of the debut. Making everything sound good and sound the way I want it too. I don't want to release demos that don't sound good or don't represent what I'm going for. So I'm getting some decent sounding demos together and showing them to labels and stuff. Working with some publishing companies and getting something where they can give me a budget to make an actual album because it's definitely not cheap. Hope to release something before the end of this year but realistically, that might not happen.

Now I know this may not be exactly a PC question but are you going to continue on touring now solo?No, it's okay! Yeah, I'm going to continue working for the solo stuff. The tour ends on February 24th and I'm going to really focus on getting the songs together and going into the studio and do some really good sounding things but yeah, I'm really going to give this a shot. Just try and see how it goes. I really want to go for it. I can't really do that if I'm also doing Hey Monday if I'm going to focus on this.

Then maybe as a solo artist, who would be your dream person to work with?I've worked with a lot of people but I still haven't written with Michelle Branch. I love her and I would love to write with her. Avril Lavigne would be cool. I would love to write with Pink and there's a few writers. Like Doctor Luke would be cool to write with. Bonnie and Mckee and Ryan Tedder.

Then maybe to end it off, are you playing all new material, are you playing some old material? Like what can kids look forward to when coming out to shows.It's mostly Hey Monday stuff and then like five or six new songs. I mean recently I've been getting requests for my stuff which is super awesome and people are actually starting to sing songs which is crazy but yeah it's mostly Hey Monday stuff because that's what they want to hear. So I sprinkle in my things here and there.

Then what's coming up? Like obviously working on music, this is your first solo tour.It's still really new! Considering that the first show of this tour was your first solo show ever and having a new band behind you. It must have been so scary!It was scary but I was so happy with the results and I was really happy with the show itself. It was in Anaheim and like two hundred people showed up and they were really, really excited and they just absorbed like all the new stuff and I was really happy to start off on the West Coast and do some shows there because they weren't like the best shows ever. To start, they never are. Like not a lot of people ever come out. I'm kind of glad we started there and now we're here on the East Coast where it's so amazing. We have like six or seven shows that we were able to do together before this run so we feel much more comfortable and everything's tighter and it's just been awesome. It's been amazing!